Hannele

Fluffy Finnish Potato Rolls – Kuohkeat perunasämpylät

I cooked deer stew yesterday and served it with sweet potato-potato mash. Of course, there’s a little bit of leftovers today. It’s not enough to eat with the rest of the stew or cook anything else. The rest of the stew will be mutated today into ragu, which we will eat with pasta. Also, we…

Finnish macaroni casserole – Makaroonilaatikko maitoon

In Finland, we have this comfort food called makaroonilaatikko. It’s just macaroni and minced beef baked with egg and milk mixture in the oven. Old fashioned makaroonilaatikko was made without meat and served as a side dish, for example, meatball sauce or different meat sauces. My grandmother made that version whenever we had family gatherings…

Korvapuusti – Authentic Finnish Cinnamon Buns

What is korvapuusti? Korvapuusti means “slap on the ears” in Finnish. Korvapuusti is a Finnish cinnamon roll shaped like slapped ears. They are sweet enriched dough scented with cardamom, filled with buttery cinnamon sugar, rolled up like cinnamon rolls, cut into triangle shapes, and pressed down in the middle to shape like it is. In…

Mashed Potato and Minced Beef Casserole – Jauhelihaperunasoselaatikko

Jauhelihaperunasoselaatikko – fun Finnish word 😀 It means minced beef and mashed potato casserole. It’s not fancy, but it’s tasty. This was one of my favorite school lunches when I was still at school. This is an excellent way to use if you have leftover mashed potatoes. If I cook food with what I serve…

Finnish lingonberry mash – Puolukkasurvos

This is a wonderful Finnish recipe for storing lingonberries! We used to do this a lot when I was a kid. First to forest to pick berries up, then cleaning and washing them and last mashing all lingonberries and storing them in the jars. Lingonberries are available in Austria. In the fall, you see them…

Finnish Meatballs in Brown Sauce – Mummin perinteiset lihapullat ruskealla kastikkeella

Finns love meatballs! Every family has their own recipe, so it’s hard to say what is original. Swedes have adopted meatballs as their own traditional dish. Still, almost every culinary culture has its own version of meatballs – it has evolved over the years and in many different hands. The first recorded mention of the…

Finnish Porkbelly sauce – Läskisoosi mummin tapaan

Finns are pork meat eaters. Be it Christmas ham, roast, or various pork sauces. Läskisoosi, or pork belly sauce, was one of my Grandmothers’s best foods. Oh, and how picky she was when choosing the belly bits for her sauce in the market hall of Tampere by the butcher. I still remember those shopping trips…

Paprika Kinkkupiirakka – Finnish savory Paprika and Ham pie

I am going to our neighbor today for a birthday party. I asked what could I bring with me and paprika-ham pie was the wish. Piirakka means pie in Finnish, it does not matter if it is sweet or sour. I think this falls more into the category of quiche, but I will call it…

Bärlauch suppe – Wood Garlic soup, and little information about this delicacy.

It’s springtime in Austria, and one sure sign of it is liverwort starting to bloom, and tender wood garlic leaves pushing through forest soil. I went to the forest this morning to see if the wood garlic was big enough to be picked. I didn’t know anything about wood garlic before I moved to Austria….

Finnish Carrot Rolls – Porkkana sämpylät

Like many of my recipes, I also learned this from my Grandmother. She baked very good carrot rolls. I went to her place after school very often for lunch. Home-baked carrot rolls were the standard thing on the table with other food. The recipe is straightforward, and you can vary it as much as you…